Is this career suicide ? Speak up or leave it ?

[howtoy]

I have been at the company 5-6 months now and I’ve noticed that they really love to test everyone’s skills quite frequently. We have a lot of sessions where we present in front of each other and then give feedback.

I’ve noticed everyone is really really negative about what everyone is doing. It’s universal and pretty brutal and often I actually disagree with some of the feedback. It’s nit picky and just unnecessary in my opinion. When you read the feedback sheets, there’s a tiny bit of positive and then lots of negative- always, for everyone and from everyone- because everyone is invited to critique everyone’s work.

I have been doing this job for a while and have never seen so much negativity. I like feedback, I’ve improved through my own feedback and can see the negatives of what I do, but sometimes, honestly, I think they’re just being hyper critical and don’t understand it / don’t listen properly and make snap judgements.

anyhow, I’ve also been asked to provide feedback on the sessions and I want to bring up that I think we focus a lot on the negatives and we should also focus equally on the positives of everyone’s work. If I was managing a team I would never do it like this. If I had serious concerns about the quality of someone’s work, I would take them aside and talk privately and give specific examples and pointers.

I don’t want to come across as uncoachable, too sensitive etc. but I really don’t like it and would like to speak up about it but I don’t want to mess things up here.

YANBU

Speak up!

Yanbu Positive feedback is just as valuable as negative if not more so (provided it’s thoughtful and not just “you were great”).

Sounds like a sado masochist's wet dream. Regular public struggle sessions to give people a good kicking. I doubt constant negative criticism does staff morale any good.

I'd be looking for a new job.

Are you all engineers by any chance?

honestly I hate it ! I tried to bring it up to some of my direct colleagues who are male and they said they don’t care. One admitted it was quite brutal this week, but he doesn’t care and doesn’t take it to heart.

Are they architects/designers where “ crit” is part and parcel of it?

Speak up! Maybe phrase it in a way that says the feedback needs to be more balanced. Could people be asked to give 2 positive comments and 1 thing the person could work on?

YANBU

You've been specifically asked to give feedback on the sessions. So give your honest feedback. I'd avoid being too negative about the sessions (oh the irony) and instead offer some suggestions for how they might be improved.

I'd also use proven examples of feedback models for how these sessions/feedback could be improved. Like using the shit sandwich model rather than disproportionately negative feedback.

If you leave in probation you only need to give one weeks notice, just saying.........

I think if the forum is about shared learning it should be about highlighting positives as well as negatives. So yes I think it's fair to speak up about rethinking that balance.

I’d say there needs to be more emphasis on identifying the positives and point out that everyone in the room will learn from that. Eg if you say “John’s method of changing his pace of delivery really helped me stay engaged with his presentation” it alerts others that that is a good thing to do. Also John may not realise that was so effective if it’s not confirmed to him, so may not do it next time.

You obviously don’t want to come across as the wimpy woman who can’t deal with criticism like all the big tough men, but I think you can say that you feel by giving negative feedback only the feedback sessions are only doing half the job.

You can do a feedback session on the feedback process, and then be really negative about it :)

😂

I think everything you are proposing is fine, but I’d leave out the ‘if I were the manager’ part.

Suggest the ‘yes, and’ method https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/04/06/leading-with-a-yes-and/

Chance to show your leadership skills too.

NRTFT
How about giving constructive evidenced based feedback? Do a literature search for your field and find published examples of using positive feedback to learn more effectively. Some phrases you may like to use when searching are compassionate leadership, black box learning (may be misquoting there),
A classic example is where narrative therapy input is used in safety critical fields to identify why errors are occurring - the consistent change needed is to adopt a non-blaming culture to let people feel free to speak up without fear. This leads to smaller issues being noted and incremental learning for better outcomes.

Point out that one of the most successful management books of all times "The one minute manager" says you give negative feedback but giving positive first, then the negative, then more positive...so the person doesn't feel attacked and or rubbish and feels that what they do matters but there are things to improve.

Tell someone they are rubbish and they will believe it...it's shite management and I can't believe anyone thinks that anyone is going to improve.

Get your boss to read "gung ho" which i think is by the same author and is the best management book I have ever read and was the book our CEO of the £2billion company I worked for introduced as the way forward

If they are trying to produce a high performing team they are going the wrong way about it. What kind of asshole manager allows this? Please find a new job.